Palm Desert should move to five districts as soon as possible

Desert Sun Editorial Board
Updated ·3 min read

Palm Desert must move to five districts and should ensure the districts are as fair as possible, and soon.

How the city gets there and how quickly this can happen is still very much an open question that needs to be resolved. The voters have spoken and 53% support moving to five districts instead of the present two, which has left one district underrepresented in the eyes of many residents, and the editorial board.

Palm Desert City Council continues to debate the future of Measure B in order to determine what actionable progress looks like.

Mayor Kathleen Kelly last week proposed the city pursue a deal that would create five districts by 2024, and also get rid of the ranked-choice voting system that has only been in place for one election.

This potential deal, which was approved by the council in a vote of 3-2, is a good compromise to help move redistricting forward – though throwing ranked-choice voting into the deal complicates matters.

In 2019, Palm Desert created two districts and moved to a ranked-choice voting system as part of a settlement agreement in a lawsuit accusing the city of violating the California Voting Rights Act with its at-large system.

Fast forward to a May 2023 city council meeting, in which Mayor Kathleen Kelly first proposed a city charter amendment — which would require voter approval in the next election — that commits the city to move to a district system when 60% of the projected growth north of Country Club Road has occurred.

North Palm Desert expects major population growth over the coming years: More than 1,600 housing units are already under construction, and nearly 3,000 more have also gained city approval, per city data. Those developments are expected to bring roughly 10,000 new residents into the city.

The idea of triggering the commencement of redistricting based on future population growth was debated and quashed during last week’s city council meeting.

Despite good intentions, we think this is an unnecessary delay.

What is clear in the redistricting debate is that the city council may not come to consensus – and that is OK.

Whether ranked-choice voting should go or stay is an entirely separate issue from redistricting. So why is it being rolled into the redistricting debate? And why was it part of the settlement in 2019 if it was an entirely separate issue?

There are both pros and cons to keeping it.

The pros:

  • Ranked-choice voting improves fairness by allowing voters to rank candidates in order of preference.

  • This creates real potential for better representation, whether by a less traditional candidate, or a third party candidate.

  • In piloting RCV in Palm Desert, the city is helping set the example of how it can be implemented on a county and state level.

The cons:

  • How votes are tabulated in ranked-choice voting is confusing to voters, and voting should be kept as simple as possible. The lack of understanding how it works, and granted it is very complex, has the potential to cause some doubt in the validity of the results in the minds of the voters.

  • Voters are accustomed to a traditional vote count. Ranked-choice voting complicates the tabulation process and in doing so, might cause the city to lose voter participation.

  • When looking at five districts in one city, there will not be a lot of voters and therefore the traditional count is more straightforward.

The list for both pros and cons goes on.

Palm Desert should go to five districts as soon as possible, and address ranked choice voting as a separate issue.

This article originally appeared on Palm Springs Desert Sun: Palm Desert should move to five districts as soon as possible